Tom Wolfe, novelist and pioneer of New Journalism, dies at 87

Tom Wolfe loved American culture for all its excess. Groupies, doormen, hippies, astronauts, bankers and frat boys took on a magisterial presence in his writing, and if there was a hint of hypocrisy in their actions, then all the better.

Wolfe reveled in worlds where people stood tall and acted with extravagance and swagger. He often joined the parade himself, author-turned-celebrity in his cream-colored suit, walking stick in hand.

Fervent disciple - if not the high priest - of New Journalism, he brought to his stories techniques often reserved for fiction and dispensed candid and often droll commentary on the obsessions and passing trends of American society. The author of 15 books, fiction and nonfiction, Wolfe is credited with such phrases as "radical chic," "the me-decade" and "the right stuff."

Kurt Vonnegut considered him a genius. Mary Gordon called him a thinking man's redneck. Surfers in La Jolla labeled him a dork after he profiled them. The novelist John Gregory Dunne observed that his writings have the capacity "to drive otherwise sane and sensible people clear around the bend."

Once asked why critics